When debugging XPath expressions, I usually work my way up from the "deepest" tag I want to match. In your case, I'd first try to match things with a tagName matching /^tag\d+$/:

//*[starts-with(name(), "tag")]

[download]

Then, I'd slowly work my way upwards, adding more specific tags or rules in front of it:

//target/*[starts-with(name(), "tag")]
//result/target/*[starts-with(name(), "tag")]

[download]

Ideally, at the end, I can then remove the floating specifier:

/result/target/*[starts-with(name(), "tag")]

[download]

Maybe you need to change your expression, or maybe XML::Twig doesn't support the starts-with() function - then I'd try the direct regular expression approach. I really wonder though whether your usage of specifying regular expressions instead of XPath expressions is correct, as I wuold imagine that XML::Twig interprets your first expression as XPath expression as well. I'm not sure how self::1 is supposed to work in conjunction with tag, as I don't think that tag[EXPR] will ever match anything that doesn't have an explicit tagName of "tag".

In reply to Re: XML::Twig and handles on regex/xpath by Corion
in thread XML::Twig and handles on regex/xpath by Eythil

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